[Sigia-l] Rollover Question (Web 2.0)

[David (Heller) Malouf]

I think of tooltips as guiding "learnability".

I think it nearly impossible to come up with icons that are meaningful to
everyone.
Tooltips have reached the point of ubiquitous convention for many different
persona types (not all), so, using them to aid in learning what icons are
totally makes sense to me. 

In fact, there are way too many sites and software products that DON'T use
them when they really need them.

I understand what Todd is saying about not relying on them, but when I think
about where I use them, I can't imagine the system being learnable without
them. 

One way around that of course is to just use labels next to your actionable
icons, no?
And then give options to remove the labels later--ala browser toolbars.

I find that method though to be a bit heavy handed for applications that are
more transactional and interactive. I barely use the toolbar on my browser
except for one button (Back) and maybe the "Tab" button in Firefox though I
think I use <ctrl-T> more. Imagine the Word toolbar filled with labels under
or next to everything. It would be a mess. Even in the more elaborate
"ribbon" of Office 2007 (highly recommend people downloading this puppy and
playing with it) they can't put lables on everything. 

Anyway, to me tooltips are a part of good design, not a crutch of bad
design. Because good design of complex applications requires more than
intuition, it requires learning through discoverability. 

-- dave 

On 9/29/06, Todd Warfel <lists at toddwarfel.com> wrote:

On Sep 28, 2006, at 11:55 PM, Andrew wrote:

> [...]and some of them definitely do use the mouse pointer as a
> guide when they are browsing around the page - they do look for
> rollovers and tooltips prior to making a click decision. Not all of 
> them, but enough so that meaningful tooltips are worthwhile.

He's not saying don't use them. He's saying don't rely on them. And
I'd agree. Great design doesn't rely on tooltips. Hmm, I think I'll
add that to my sig... 


Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel
Partner, Design & Usability Specialist
Messagefirst | designing and usability consulting
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Contact Info
Voice:    (607) 339-9640 
Email:    todd at messagefirst.com
AIM:       twarfel at mac.com
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In theory, theory and practice are the same.
In practice, they are not.


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-- 
David (Heller) Malouf
dave.ixd at gmail.com
http://synapticburn.com/